Woman sent to prison after falsely accusing four men of rape
Posted by News Editor
Tuesday, February 06, 2007

The following story appears in the Daily Mail here

Shoppers at the sprawling Cheshire supermarket would have had no reason to take any notice of the man sorting out the jumble of trolleys in the busy car park this week. Mark Berry, after all, is an ordinary-looking man doing an ordinary job.

But 26-year-old Mr Berry’s life has been far from normal of late.

In recent months, he has undergone a terrible ordeal which continues to hang over him to this day: last year, on a warm September evening, he was arrested at home on suspicion of rape.

Thrown into police cells overnight, the terrified and bewildered employee could only repeat what he knew to be the truth - that he’d only ever spoken to his 22-year-old ‘victim’ twice and had never so much as laid a finger on her.

Only after several tense days - days in which he was suspended from work and made to feel like a pariah in his local community - were the charges dropped. Confronted by flaws in her story, Abigail Gibson was forced to confess that she had fabricated the whole incident.

The unfortunate Mr Berry told the Mail this week: "Since the arrest, I get terrible flashbacks to what happened and keep crying about it. I was detained in a custody suite overnight. It was very cold in the cell and I felt terrible.

"I should not have been there in the first place. I was unable to sleep and totally confused. I was terrified about what would happen to me."

In total, Berry spent 18 hours in custody, during which he was forced to undergo a medical examination.

And shockingly, he is not the only man to be so humiliated at the hands of Abigail Gibson.

In the past few years, she has made three other false accusations of rape, including one against her own father, a Methodist minister no less.

It is a grim roll call, and one for which Gibson is now, finally, being punished.

Last week, she began a two-year jail sentence for what Chester Crown Court was told were her "wicked lies".

The news has come as some comfort for her string of victims .....

.....  as she settles into her cell at Styal women’s prison this week, Abigail Gibson has all the time in the world to contemplate the legacy of her terrible lies.

For her own sake - and for the sake of the men whose lives she has tarnished with her fantasies - we can only hope she has learned her lesson.